Hello community!

I come to you for advice. Using an m1 macbook air since 2020, I installed popos on my old 2013 macbook pro and I was quite happy with it but… I bought a steamdeck two weeks ago and exploring its desktop mode made me reconsider some choices. Using distros based on different systems, with different commands, desktop environment, etc. gets a little confusing for someone like me, who doesn’t use linux as my main machine. Do you have any advice for me? From what I understand, steamos is debian-based while popos is ubuntu-based: is that the biggest part of how a distribution works, ie commands, etc.? Good ui/ux is important for me so i should maybe use nitrux or deepin, that are debian-based, or is it a bad idea to choose a less common distro for a amateur like me?

Thanks in advance, I’m a bit lost.

  • throwawayish@lemmy.ml
    23·
    10 months ago

    steamos is debian-based

    This used to be the case until the launch of the Steam Deck, on which SteamOS (3) is actually based on Arch instead. However, SteamOS is a very special distro based on Arch due to ‘immutability’, how it achieves said ‘immutability’, the implications thereof, ‘freezing’ of packages, inability to install packages persistently without some hacking etc. So, SteamOS is not representative of how Arch works in general.

    while popos is ubuntu-based

    And Ubuntu is based on Debian.

    is that the biggest part of how a distribution works, ie commands, etc.?

    If we take your average (popular) distro, so the likes of Gentoo, NixOS etc are dismissed as they are very unique compared to the others, then arguably the most important differentiators would be: Model for updates, package manager and available packages. One might delve deeper into this and with the advent of stuff like Distrobox this becomes a lot more blurred, but traditionally speaking the aforementioned three things used to be the main differentiators. Beyond those, the end-user has the freedom to do whatever with their system. For example, Pop!_OS comes with GNOME + their own touches by default. However, the desktop mode of SteamOS comes with KDE. But you can install KDE on Pop!_OS and even customize it very closely to how it’s done over at SteamOS. This is not a special quality of Pop!_OS, but of Linux in general.

    Good ui/ux is important for me so i should maybe use nitrux or deepin

    It’s important to note that both of these are not unique in what they offer in terms of UI/UX. You can recreate 99% of it yourself, simply by installing the appropriate desktop environment; which constitutes most of the UI/UX. Nitrux has KDE as its desktop environment (with a touch of Maui), while deepin uses the Deepin desktop environment. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend any desktop environment beyond Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE and Xfce. Don’t be discouraged by this though, feel free to put Nitrux and deepin on a Live USB to get a feel for them. Regarding good UI/UX, your best bets are probs Kubuntu, Linux Mint, openSUSE and Pop!_OS. Honourable mention would be MX Linux, but I don’t recommend systemd-less distros to newer users.

    that are debian-based

    Sure, Nitrux is based on Debian. But it’s immutable, systemd-less and favors AppImages over Flatpak/Snap. It’s a cool project, but I find it hard to recommend to a newer user. While deepin is less unique by comparison, it’s far from a distro that’s known for its polish. I’d argue it’s mostly just eye-candy instead 😅.

    or is it a bad idea to choose a less common distro for a amateur like me?

    Bullseye! This isn’t a hard rule though. I started venturing into Linux through a somewhat obscure distro as well 😅. But, at the time, I researched for about a week which distro to install and why. Afterwards I spent another week on how I should install it and what should be considered for install. And then I installed it, after which I spent almost two weeks getting the system to a working state. It still wasn’t quite there yet, but after spending a month on it from start to finish I wanted to move on to something else 😅. I kept the install, don’t get me wrong. And it became my daily-driver. After some time I even ‘fell in love with it’. But like, I know that I can be stubborn about things like this and persevere where others might have preferred to hit their heads to the wall instead. So your mileage may vary…

    Do you have any advice for me?

    As you’ve correctly assessed, you are indeed lost 😅 . That’s fine, I think almost all of us have been lost at some point in time. Uhmm…, but honestly, I think you’re conflating two very distinct things. Pop!_OS is a general-use distro on which you can do whatever. And most distros that people talk about and engage with are similarly general-use distros. SteamOS, on the other hand, isn’t quite like that. Sure, you may hack your way and achieve some things with it. But it’s false to believe that you can find any distro that qualifies as SteamOS but on your laptop. Before giving you any recommendations, would you be so kind to answer the following:

    • Your post is written in a way that implies that you want to forego Pop!_OS for another distro that’s more like SteamOS. Therefore my question would be:
      • What things from SteamOS did you prefer over Pop!_OS? Please be specific and elaborate*.
    • thethirdobject@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      10 months ago

      Thank you for taking the time to explain my muddied understanding of linux and its various distros! You’re completely right about the stuff around packages and updates being the important differentiators, and it’s really hard to grasp without using linux and testing different things. Coming from popos and typing apt-get in steamos, but wait I should use pacman and oh what are those AppImage I keep hearing about: that was really confusing because I didn’t know what knowledge I lacked and how to look it up. reason was and some information about it was just contradictory. I think the steamos thing changing from debian to arch actually confused me a lot too, plus contradictory information and command lines, etc.

      From what I gather, and thinking back on my short and past, while appreciated, incursion into the linux world:

      • I prefer KDE over gnome (I think that’s what’s bothering me about my install of popos at the moment)
      • Typing command line doesn’t bother me (on the opposite: I feel like I understand what is going on better if I can actually type in commands), but I don’t fully understand the difference and advantages/disadvantages between pacman, apt, yum, etc. I’m more used to apt and I feel like there’s more information available, but that’s it.

      Thank you also for the info about nitrux and the others, there is a lot of confusion between prettiness (or eye-candiness ;) ) and actually good ui/ux, and you were on the point.

      • throwawayish@lemmy.ml
        2·
        10 months ago

        Glad to hear that I was able to contribute 🙂 ! And thank you for your great reply!

        I prefer KDE over gnome (I think that’s what’s bothering me about my install of popos at the moment)

        That could definitely be it. No worries, even the community is somewhat polarized on GNOME; with a big chunk of the community favoring it over all the other desktop environments, while another big chunk doesn’t tolerate it at all. However, the reason that everyone has an outspoken opinion on it comes primarily from the fact that a lot of distros come with GNOME by default; with both Ubuntu and Fedora being the big ones (sure; both have flavors/spins with other desktop environments, but their main ISO defaults to GNOME). Regarding recommendations; while any major (independent) distro should technically suffice, I would argue that Kubuntu and openSUSE (contrary to the others; openSUSE actually defaults to KDE) are both excellent choices, with both Fedora’s KDE Spin and Debian (on which you can pick KDE during first install) are very good choices as well if you lean more towards minimalism. While Arch deserves a mention regardless, I don’t think you’re ready (yet).

        Typing command line doesn’t bother me (on the opposite: I feel like I understand what is going on better if I can actually type in commands)

        That’s great to hear!

        but I don’t fully understand the difference and advantages/disadvantages between pacman, apt, yum, etc. I’m more used to apt and I feel like there’s more information available, but that’s it.

        I won’t be able to be exhaustive on this, so I instead I’ll lean more towards being somewhat oversimplistic for the sake of brevity.

        • pacman is the package manager on Arch(-based distros)
        • apt is the package manager on Debian(-based distros)
        • yum used to be the package manager on Fedora(-based distros), but has since been replaced by dnf. You can still install packages using yum on these distros, however it’s just an alias for dnf.

        These are not the only package managers out there, as almost all independent distros come with their own package manager; apk (on Alpine), eopkg (on Solus), xbps (on Void) and zypper (on openSUSE) etc. The tasks of the package manager are varied, but all of them are to be interacted with when installing, upgrading and removing software. As the feature-set is different, so too are their performances. A rolling release distro like Arch will receive a constant stream of updates, thus having access to a package manager that’s very fast is beneficial. Thus we find that pacman is very optimized for speed. To perhaps illustrate how much difference this can make, I compared Alpine’s apk with openSUSE’s zypper. Note that Alpine is one of the most minimalist distros out there, and its apk might be the fastest package manager that’s in active use. So here are the results:

        • sudo apk add firefox 0.01s user 0.02s system 0% cpu 8.216 total
        • sudo zypper install -y firefox 0.02s user 0.06s system 0% cpu 33.727 total

        On which the number before total reveals how much time it took in seconds. These tests were done in distrobox containers btw*.

        Speed is not the only important metric, however as ultimately one can not engage with packages without waiting for them to be installed/updated/removed, a lot of the discourse is about how fast the package managers are at installing, updating and removing packages.